Jellybeans. Conversations with Care. The Jellybeans started here and are now also hosted on lifeinthefastlane.com (The Original) & www.IntensiveCareNetwork.com This is the complete collection. Sometimes containing more controversial offerings.

What are Jellybeans all about?

My name is Doug Lynch. I am a doctor. Like all doctors I am a human too. (Well almost all doctors, some of them I am a little unsure about.)

I talk a lot. Mostly this is a good thing.

I am responsible for a tiny podcast type thing called a Jellybean. A Jellybean is a short conversation with a caring person, from personal carers, through traditional healers and super-nurses, to Top-Gun paramedics and world class mega-scientists! Jellybeans are recorded face to face, unscripted, agenda-free, completely uncut, and put out unchanged. It is all done on a mobile device, a phone or iPad. There is only one moment of editing; once I stop the recording I ask the person I’m chatting to if they are happy with it and I will delete the whole thing if they are not. Bam! That’s its. Completely improvised. That’s a promise. In reality it is I, the “interviewer”, that comes across as an idiot, stumbling over words or losing my thread. To date not a single person has asked for a delete, not a single person has asked even for a play back. I am not trying to catch anyone out, mostly I am asking them to share a story. The Jellybeans are just as varied as the people I am talking to.

They are called Jellybeans because they are meant to be small, bite size, sweet things that won’t fill you up. They are the sort of podcast you might listen to for the last few minutes of your commute to work because your brain cannot take in any more hardcore medical education. I listen to the “Gobbet-o-pus” podcast by Mark Crislip for this purpose. http://www.edgydoc.com Hilarious!

These Jellybeans have become surprisingly popular. People keep asking me where they can find them.

Previously the Jellybeans gathered at http://www.soundcloud.com/TheTopEnd In fact they are still gathering there. This is more of a normal website approach which allows me to tinker with them.

They were picked up by the rather impressive Mike Cadogan @sandnsurf and he publishes them on http://www.lifeinthefastlane.com (probably the best free medical education resource in the world) While LifeInthefastlane is really, really good it is but a small part of an amazing and anarchic movement in medicine called #FOAMed (Free Open Access Medical education) No one owns #FOAMed

Now they will also be archived here with more back story, more post chat analysis, more rants, more tangents, more cultural references, more medical links, more bad jokes, more extroverted introspection, more me and more you. There are hundreds of blogs and websites and twitter identities and Instagram photographers and so on that are run by medical educators and commentators. I shall be meeting these folks and talking to them and letting you hear what they have to say. These people do it all for no money. But not for nothing.

The way I see it is that healthcare should be free, good healthcare should be free, good training to become a good health carer should be free but this is often not the case. If a doctor or nurse, a paramedic or any smart caring professional involved in the whole circus is willing to spend their own free time learning to be better at caring for you or me or your mum or your children then this is a good thing.

No one should profit from someone else’s misery. Should anyone profit from the control of the knowledge that is required to provide the best possible care in any given situation? Control of information sucks, it’s a stepping stone to totalitarianism. So making the knowledge Free Open Accessible to all that are willing to burn the midnight oil to get better at caring for humankind is what #FOAMed is all about.

You can read about and learn from #FOAMed in lots of places. I recommend that you do. I am not trying to be an educator like @emcrit or @emmanchester. I’m just another confused human trying to do my best.

That best would ideally lead to a better world. I consider myself a feminist. I don’t consider gender equality to be a women issue. I am anti-war. I am anti-violence. I am anti-priveledge. I don’t believe borders should exist and I am ashamed to live in Australia due to the cruel detention of asylum seekers in hell holes around the pacific. Shame! (If you think people should be locked up in those places feel free to comment. I have no doubt that you would be found out.)

Hi Tim,
I’m reading your post on the Arran Island docs and up you pop!
It’s an iPhone Boom Mic.
It’s made by Belkin.
I got it from photojojo.com
Be careful, they have a lot of cool stuff and you will almost certainly spend more than the $40 they charge now for the mic.
If ever you see one of those mic’s, or anything that looks like it, I want you to think of me.